should be married immediately. He seated himself by me, embraced me, and called me his wife, and gave me this beautiful ring, as the wedding ring. I dare not say more to you, my dear sister; but I am in terrible fear; I am ill; I weep all the day, and it is in vain that I watch the road to Geneva, for I see nothing of Mr. Belton."

Nanette, who was just married, plied the unhappy Claudine with questions. After many tears had been shed, she at last learned that the Englishman had shamefully deceived this artless and unfortunate girl, and that Claudine was likely to be a mother.

What was to be done? How was this calamity to he made known to the terrible Mr. Simou? To hide it from him was impossible. The good Nanette did not heighten the despair of her sister by useless reproaches: she even sought to console her, by giving her hopes of a pardon, which she was sure would never be granted. After they had often consulted together on the subject, Nanette, with the consent of her sister, had an interview with our worthy rector, entrusted to him the whole of the secret, and implored him to break it to her father, to soften him, to convince him that Claudine's fault was the crime of the wicked Englishman, and to take the needful measures to save the honour, or at least the life, of the poor deluded girl. Our rector, though he was sadly cast down by this news, undertook, nevertheless, to communicate it to the father, and accordingly he went to Simon's house at an hour when he was sure that Claudine would be on the Montanverd. *.*.D.

TO BE RESUMED.

*THE WALK OF AL RASCHID,

THE ARABIAN PHILOSOPHER.

AT the court of the Caliph, Musa Al Hadi, lived an old man, by name Al Raschid, on whom the petty courtiers exercised their wit, whom the ladies disliked,

This little piece is translated from the German, by Mr. Thompson, the translator of the German Drama.

and who, during seventy-six years, had been fourteen times banished from the presence of his sovereign, because some unpleasant truth was for ever dropping from his lips. He laughed at banishment, for in the garden of nature he always found the best company; and the court fourteen times recalled him, because it was perceived that he could be happy at a distance from the court. During one of the periods of his banishment, as he was tracing the path of wisdom in retirement, he was lucky enough to gain a knowledge in the language of animals. From that moment, his favourite amusement was in listening to them, and he found that they often talked more rationally than the great men who surrounded the caliph's throne. He one day observed upon the leaves of a bush a colony of those insects called Ephemera; to whom the Creator has affixed the end of their existence almost close to the hour of their birth, for they are born and die in the same day. Al Raschid attentively approached a small group of them, and perceived that they were engaged in a violent dispute; but, as they were all talking together, it was long before he could discover the subject of their controversy. At length, when the most vociferous of them had bawled till they were tired, he found that their conversation turned upon two foreign virtuosos, who were just arrived. These were a humble bee and a gnat, upon whose pre-eminence the opinions of the ephemera were much divided. One side maintained that the humble bee sang the finest bass which' had ever been heard throughout the empire of insects, while the other defended the fascinating treble of the gnat.

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Happy race!" exclaimed Al Raschid, “who, in spite of the few hours allotted to their existence, can thus amuse yourselves with the bass of a bee, and the treble of a gnat." With a smile, he turned his ear to one of the oldest ephemera, who sat alone upon a leaf, and uttered the following soliloquy.-"The most celebrated philosophers of our nation, who lived many hours before me, have asserted that this world cannot last longer than eighteen hours, and methinks they were right. For, when I consider how much that great globe of fire, from which all nature gains existence,

has, even during my time, declined towards the sea, which surrounds this earth, I cannot but suppose that it will there end its career, and its torch be extin guished in the waves. The earth must then be lost in total darkness, which must naturally produce universal annihilation. Of these eighteen hours I have lived seven,-four hundred and twenty minutes! A great age! How few among us reach that period!-I have seen whole generations rise, flourish, and decay. My present friends are the children and grand children of those whom I knew in my youth. They are gone long before me, and, alas! but too soon shall I follow them. I must own, Heaven be thanked, I feel tolerably well in my old age; yet, according to the customary course of nature, I can, at the very utmost, only expect to live eight minutes more. What then avails all my industry? What avails it, that, with a thousand anxieties and cares, I have gathered a portion of sweet dew upon this leaf, which the approaching end of my existence will not allow me to enjoy? In vain have I so often risked my life in battles for our nation. In vain have I, far from the bustle of the world, endeavoured to form this colony by salutary precepts. 'Tis true, my friends flatter me that I shall leave a great name behind me; but, what avails this, if, at the end of eighteen hours, the sun shall be extinguished, and the world dissolve into eternal nothingness? Oh! if I could but expect a durable fame of thirty or forty hours.".

Al Raschid smiled; and immediately started at having smiled; for hours and years-are they not the same at last? B.T.

NATURAL PHENOMENA.

No. 36. THE CLOCK MAKER'S SALT WORKS.

AT Port Miggiora, in the island of Goza, near Malta, are the salt works called the Clock Maker's. They are situated to the west of the mountain Zebuccio, or Zebug, at the farthest part of a valley leading to the sea. The entrance is through a long range of rocks gently

declining towards the shore, and within forty feet of the level of the water, when they become on a sudden. entirely perpendicular. The making these salt works was the cause of a phenomenon too remarkable to be passed over in silence.

About sixty years since, a Maltese clock maker, who owned the above mentioned rocks, formed a plan of making salt works by digging a reservoir, and letting in the sea water. He flattered himself that the heat of the sun would cause the water to evaporate, leaving behind it a sufficient quantity of salt, not only to indemnify him for the expence he had been at, but to enrich him considerably. The difficulty was to facilitate the entrance of the water, it being forty or fifty feet below the reservoir made in the rock. After a variety of attempts, he at length discovered that there was a grotto under the rock, which communicated with the sea; he therefore immediately pierced the rock in a perpendicular direction, and made an aperture like the mouth of a well. This plan succeeded exceedingly well; and he was delighted to find that the water in the reservoir diminished every day, which he attributed to the natural effect of the sun: and he continued letting in as much water as possible, in hopes of encreasing the quantity of salt. But his surprise was beyond description on perceiving that the water, instead of being evaporated, was absorbed by the spungy rock, from which, owing to filtration, it in time returned to the place whence it originally came. It was some time before he made this discovery; which at last was owing to his wishing to collect the salt that he imagined to be contained in the reservoir, at the bottom of which the rock was entirely dissolved by the acid of the salt, and nothing remained but a thick kind of mud. The grief he suffered from this disappointment threw him into a long and dangerous illness. On the approach of winter the weather became windy and the sea rough. One day in particular a terrible storm arose, and the violence of the wind drove the raging waves into the grotto; where the body of water encreased considerably, and being confined and compressed in this narrow spot, acquired an immense force. There being no passage but the well newly

opened, it forced its way through with violence, and appeared like a beautiful wheatsheaf of water of so large a circumference, as to fill up the mouth of the well, and rising perfectly entire to the height of sixty feet, formed a magnificent aigrette. Its projectile force was so great that the wind could not act upon it till it had reached the above mentioned height; when it suddenly separated, and the aqueous particles composing this immense body of water, were diffused over the country on all sides, to the extent of more than a mile. This violent rain of salt water destroyed all vegetation, and the cultivated fields, which before had been amply productive, appeared as if they had suffered from fire.

Before the opening of the upper part of the rock such an effect could not have been produced. The resistance of the confined air, which then had no passage, would have prevented the waters from accumulating; consequently the air and the waves would have preserved a just equilibrium: but the cavity in the rock, letting out the air, destroyed this equilibrium, and the water collected in the grotto caused the above fatal event.

The inhabitants of the neighbourhood brought an action against the clock maker, and claimed damages to a great amount; but he died before the affair was decided. To prevent another misfortune of the same nature, they stopped up the mouth of the well with large stones. This operation occasioned another phenomenon, as extraordinary as the former. A great quantity of air was confined by the waves at the bottom of the grotto; which being condensed, repulsed the water with such violence as to cause the most terrible explosions, which not only shook the rock, but the whole of the neighbourhood. The tremendous noise of these different explosions resounded through all the grottos, and resembled a discharge of artillery of all sizes quickly succeeding each other. These sounds being constantly echoed, had the effect of the most violent peals of thunder, particularly when different storms met together. The terror was general; and constant apprehensions were entertained that the rocks would be thrown down, under which the subter